


And in the Darkness Bind Them

by spuffyduds



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: 1000-3000 words, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-22
Updated: 2010-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-06 13:50:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffyduds/pseuds/spuffyduds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Done for a ficathon for the prompt of these three guys, "team bonding or bondage--or both!"</p>
    </blockquote>





	And in the Darkness Bind Them

**Author's Note:**

> Done for a ficathon for the prompt of these three guys, "team bonding or bondage--or both!"

**Day One**

"Remind me why we feel it necessary to trade with a village that's four days' grueling, sweaty, buggy hike from a gate?" Rodney says.

"Teyla claims," Sheppard says, "that they grow something reeeeeaaaaalllly similar to coffee."

"Oh. Right." Rodney says, and speeds up. He very nearly keeps pace with Ronon, for a while.

**Day Two**

"Bored," Rodney says. "Sweaty, bug-bitten, thigh-chafed, but mostly bored. Really very bored," and to his surprise Ronon starts _reciting_ something. It must be in Satedan, and even though Rodney doesn't understand a word of it, it's impressive as hell--there's a lot of alliteration, some assonance, and just a grand epic _feel_ to it. It feels like listening to Beowulf, except it doesn't sound jagged and craggy like that. The consonants are all--rounded off, somehow. Buttery.

Ronon goes on for a long time, and Rodney actually gets kind of lost in it, forgets that he's hot and uncomfortable and tired and sore. Ronon finally wraps it up just as they reach a hill-top, and he's silhouetted against the setting sun--did he _plan_ that?--when he booms out something that sounds like "Blufroundeyu," drops his head and goes quiet.

"Wow," Rodney says.

"Yeah," Sheppard says, and Rodney jumps a little; he'd forgotten Sheppard was _there_.

"What was that _about_?" Rodney says.

Ronon shrugs. "Eviscerations, mostly."

**Day Three**

"You're up," Ronon says to Sheppard.

"What?"

"You're the storyteller, today."

"Whoa," Sheppard says. "No. I don't have any good stories. Rodney."

"No!"

"I _order_ you to take a turn," Shephard says, grins slowly.

"Oh for God's sake," Rodney says. And because any real story from his life would involve having to sketch out calculations, and because, well, here they are hiking through the wilderness and all, he launches into Tolkien.

Not word-for-word, of course. The summarized Good Parts version, which means among other things that he leaves out two hundred pages worth of trees moving very, very slowly. He's pretty thorough on hitting all the big events, though, and on getting everything in the right order, because, yes, okay, he read through the whole damn thing every year from ages nine to twenty-three. Okay, twenty-_seven_.

Ronon gets surprisingly into it. He makes a little growly noise every time the Ringwraiths show up.

John rolls his eyes some at first.

"Oh, like _you_ never read it," Rodney says.

"Once. I didn't _memorize_ it," John says. But Rodney has his suspicions, and a bit later he purposefully mangles some Elvish, and John _corrects_ him, and then winces.

"You are so very busted," Rodney says.

"Get back to the _story_," Ronon says.

Rodney's voice is creaky and shredded by the time they stop for the night. They spread out bedrolls, and then they all three do a little Teyla-designed stretching routine. ("I grow weary," she said when she taught it to them, "of hearing you make elderly-man noises in the morning every time we have to sleep on the ground.") It is completely goofy looking, but it _works_.

Ronon volunteers for first watch, and Rodney and John strip to boxers and tees, lie down. Rodney's almost asleep when Ronon comes rustling back through the brush after his first circuit around the camp, and it takes him a minute to make any sense of it when Ronon hunkers down next to him and says, "The Fellowship, did they ever do any frolldela?"

Rodney blinks, can't get a sound out of his scratchy throat for a minute, then manages, "Any what?"

Ronon waves his hands in a frustrated "things get lost in translation" way. "It's a way to...calm down, relax, focus before a fight."

Sheppard raises up on his elbow on Rodney's other side, says, "Well, some people speculate that the pipeweed was a little more than tobacco..."

"No," Ronon says. "Not like that," and then he's unlacing his bracers, which Rodney has never seen him do. In fact Rodney had assumed that they were _sacred_ somehow, were never supposed to come off, meant that Ronon was--married to the Satedan army or something.

And then he's, he's lacing them onto Rodney's arms, which is very bizarre, very--intimate, what the _hell_? On Rodney they take up almost his whole lower arms, wrist to elbow, and once they're on, Ronon takes the leftover leather lacing and--very fast, very neatly with those big hands--ties them together.

"Um," Rodney says. "Hey? What?" And with one hand Ronon pins Rodney's wrists to the ground above his head.

Rodney panics, because, oh my God, Ronon is attempting some sort of chiropracty designed for giant Satedan soldiers and he is going to _break Rodney in half._

Rodney opens his mouth to say, "Thank you very much, I so appreciate the thought and I deeply respect your cultural relaxation practices but I like my spine where it is," but he does not manage to do what he is planning with his mouth, because Ronon leans over and sticks his tongue in it.

Ronon does that for a while and Rodney just lies there, because. Because Ronon's tongue is in his mouth and Rodney does not currently understand the universe. At all.

Ronon sits back up. Rodney rolls his head to look at Sheppard, who is sitting up on his bedroll but who is absolutely no help because he just blinks at Rodney, very slowly, and says, "Huh. What?"

Rodney looks at Ronon, who looks perfectly calm, and Rodney manages to say in a nearly normal voice, "So. That's...flowdelia?"

"First part of it," Ronon says, and slides his free hand down Rodney's stomach and into his boxers.

"Oh," Rodney says, and wow that's a huge hand, a huge hand on his _cock_. Squeezing. "See, I'm a little confused here, because"--squeezing, and stopping to run fingertips lightly up the length, and then squeezing some more--"because we are not actually headed for a fight, we--Jesus!--" and getting into a rhythm, now, a good one a fast one a rhythm Rodney likes yes yes--"we are. We are, oh, going to a, ah ah ah _coffee market_."

"Markets can be stressful," Sheppard says, sitting up next to them and watching, Sheppard is _watching_ and Rodney's coming.

Rodney just lies there for a minute, after. He looks at Ronon, who looks--smug but in an everyday way, like he just showed them a mildly nifty knife-throwing trick. Rodney looks at Sheppard, who looks. Well. Rodney's trying to come up with a comparison for how he looks, but Sheppard's eyes are glazed over and his mouth is open and a little wet and really the only thing he looks like is, he looks like he just watched Ronon jack Rodney off.

Ronon stops pinning Rodney's wrists, and starts unlacing the bracers.

"Thank you?" Rodney says. "I mean. Thank you." And really, he does feel better, warm and soothed, and he'll have to explain to Ronon later that this is not so much how they do things where Rodney's from, but right now he's going to shove the whole thing into that large, overcrowded part of his brain marked "Strange and Upsetting Things I Am Not Thinking About," and just go to sleep.

Except. Except that Ronon's got one bracer off Rodney now, and on the other side of Rodney, Sheppard--Sheppard is taking his watch off. Sheppard is silently holding his bare wrist out toward Ronon.

"Oh," Rodney says, a breathy little sound, almost a whimper, and he ends up hardly sleeping at all.

**Day Four**

Ronon is walking ahead like usual, but nothing else is usual, because Sheppard's hardly said anything all morning and when he did it was just things like "Look out for that branch."

Rodney wants to be a good example of "See, nothing has changed at all!" and make normal chatter, but he can't think of a damn thing to say either.

Finally, almost halfway through the day, Sheppard suddenly says, "I don't really feel any more _relaxed_."

"Yes!" Rodney says. "Yes, exactly, right, me neither."

He ventures a sidelong glance at Sheppard, the first time he's gotten up the courage to look in hours, and Sheppard's smiling a little.

"I feel pretty damn _good_, though," Sheppard says.

"Yes," Rodney says, and smiles a little back. "Yeah."

 

\--END--


End file.
